Fic - Freefalling Into Nothing (Rebecca) R, 1/1

[abvj]

Title: Freefalling Into Nothing
Summary: She tries sometimes, to remember what it's like to be starry eyed, innocent, but she can't. Some people aren't that lucky.
Rating: R
Author's Notes: 4,594 words. Post  Moral Hazard. Mostly Rebecca with slight Justin/Rebecca if you squint hard enough. There are a lot of liberties taken, because we really don't know all that much about Rebecca and I thought she deserved a sufficient backstory. All mistakes are mine. The characters, however, are not. Reviews are a lovely, lovely thing.

[preface]

When she was younger, Rebecca used to sit back and watch from afar as her mother washed vicodin down with a glasses of cheap chardonnay (and people still, now, after all these years, wonder where she picked up the habit). She used to watch as Holly spun lies together one by one, day after day, so many little strings that came together in a tangled web that blocks her vision when she lies to people and says, things were good once like she means it.

Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t; the abundance of bad just seems to overshadow the good and years sixteen through twenty were just so hard, blurred with drugs and alcohol and boys who mean nothing in an effort to ease the pain of the man who meant everything.

She tries sometimes, to recall what it was like to be sixteen and starry-eyed, innocent, but she just can’t.

Some people just aren’t that lucky.

[one]

Lena is her first call.

Which she knows is a surprise considering everything that transpired between them in last year, but after her mother kicks her out of the house and Justin kicks her out of his life, there really is nowhere else to turn. Besides, she rationalizes internally as she gnaws at the skin on the sides of her thumbnail, they’ve always had this sort of unspoken agreement between the two of them, this rule that started way back when things were so not complicated that said, you need me, I’m there.

So Rebecca had called and Lena had said okay, albeit it grudgingly (and that right there, the I’m only doing this because I have to, tone should have been enough to send her packing in another direction, but Rebecca was never very good at heeding warning signs) and before she could think twice she’s at Lena’s front door, bags at her feet, with something similar to regret seeping into her bones.

Lena smiles, but it’s tight and brittle, and it cuts through Rebecca unexpectedly, because they were friends once, the best of friends, and before the Walkers, before Justin, Lena was it. Her only constant in a life full of shifting and now that she’s Walker-less, Justin-less, and even motherless (although this can hardly be called a new development), it’s only fitting that she finds her way back here.

“Dare I ask?”

“Apparently I’ve overstayed my welcome,” is all Rebecca replies, pushing her bags through the door with her foot. At Lena’s curious look, she adds, “everywhere,” with enough bitterness that Lena knows better than to push the issue any further.

“Ah.”

“Yeah,” she draws out the word longer than necessary as she plops down on the couch with a long sigh.

Lena follow suit and neither says a word. The apartment is silent, eerily so, and Rebecca fidgets with the frayed hem of her T-shirt, taps her fingers on the jean clad thigh. It’s uncomfortable, awkward, and she thinks, sadly, that things were good before them once - remembers with fond clarity birthdays, parties, road trips - but them remembers the last year in the same breath, the lies and the affair and unconsciously moves away from her. And it feels weird, to be here like this, sitting next to each other with all their past and memories between them, something that usually acts as a common ground, pushing them farther apart.

Biting her bottom lip, Rebecca shifts in her seat. She wants to tell Lena that she’s sorry for pushing her away, for trading their history, their expansive past for a newer model family. She remembers, right in that moment, drinks months ago, and Lena’s You’ve changed slipping out, conversational and accusing at the same time. She remembers denying it, steadfast, but tasting the lie before it fell off her tongue, because deep down she knew she had changed, could see them in herself day in and day out. It was just that looking in the mirror at the new and improved Rebecca was a lot easier to swallow than the old Rebecca who did nothing but disappoint and destroy everything in her path.

Rebecca sighs heavily. “You wouldn’t, you know, want to go out and get drunk would you? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, that sounds really amazing -“

“- I know this great place.”

They smile at each other and it’s almost like old times.

[two]

“Do you want to talk about?”

Rebecca throws back another shot, chases it with a beer, and signals the bartender for another. It burns on the way down, swims gloriously in the pit of her stomach, and she can feel the buzz humming in her veins, warming her blood. It’s tingly. Refreshing. She sighs. She’s missed this.

“No.”

“Alrighty then.”

She’s a flirty drunk, a touchy drunk, a fun drunk by any means (and just a drunk altogether, really) and it’s really no surprise that within twelve hours of having her world crash down around her, again, this is where she finds herself. They drink their cosmos and smoke their cigarettes and flirt with every male in sight, attached or not. It’s fun and it’s them and for a second, just a second, Rebecca forgets the last week, the last year, and it’s almost as though nothing has changed, like the insurmountable space that was between her and Lena just an hour ago in the living room didn’t exist anymore.

And it’s nice, like she’s the old Rebecca again, because the old Rebecca was fun and exciting and somewhere after her sixth drink courtesy of a man named Daniel who was tall and blonde and so not her type, she thinks she could move forward if she tried. Thinks that she could forget about being an almost Walker, that she could forget that the Walkers even existed. Forget that the person she became because of them (for them) didn’t matter in the least.

She even toasts to it. Twice.

*

She wakes, hours later, sprawled out on Lena’s couch, head pounding, stomaching lurching as she opens her eyes against the stream of sunlight pouring in from the open curtains. Her phone vibrates and rings on the table next to her and she reaches blindly for it. Two missed calls, a voicemail, all from Nora. There’s a pain in her chest, near her heart, sharp, blinding and she grimaces, wonders if she knows, if Justin told her about the lies, about the truth.

Groaning she turns into the couch and switches her phone off. Wonders, briefly, as she contemplates getting up, whether eleven AM is too early to break out the booze, because all she can think about in that moment between the pounding in her head and the queasiness in her stomach is how badly she wants another drink.

It’s a feeling she’s oddly familiar with.

[Interlude]

The drinking starts early on.

Thirteen, maybe fourteen, she’s not really sure, but she can remember the circumstances with acute clarity (mostly because it’s a progression of sorts, kind of like a wham-ban-thank-you-m’am, which, she thinks could very well sum up her entire young adult life) - her mother went out of town, Lena came over, the liquor cabinet was open and she spent the proceeding twenty-four hours puking and crying and praying, please, God, make it stop because she’s never been so sick in her entire life.

(It’s a good thing, though, her and Lena will laugh later on, because they’re pros by high school, and guys always did like girls who could drink with best of them).

The pills started later, sometime after the affair with the teacher commenced, maybe sixteen, probably closer to seventeen - young enough to be able to chalk it up to naiveté but with enough experience to know better, the story of her life - another weekend alone, the liquor cabinet was left open (Holly really did have a hard time learning from her mistakes), her mother’s vicodin in the medicine cabinet above the coffee. It was available and easy and nothing she had never seen done before.

And this is where it started, she’ll think later, years down the road when she’s miserable and alone in Chicago, wishing for a life that wasn’t hers. She’ll remember that moment, the way she stood over her mother’s porcelain sink and looked at herself in the mirror, all jagged edges and dull eyes and remember the way the scotch burned her throat on the way down, the feel of the glass in her hand. The slow release. The weightlessness.

Out of all the mistakes she’s made over the years, that’s the one she regrets the most.

[three]

“You look rough.”

Rebecca runs a hand over her face as she slides into a seat at the kitchen table. Her body aches with the movement; she’s not used to this anymore.

“Got any juice?” She asks, but Lena’s already there, placing the glass in front of her, a peculiar smirk on her face as she settles into the seat across from her, newspaper in hand.

There’s silence that echoes in-between the rustle of the paper, the clink of her glass against the cheap wood of the table. Still, two days later, it’s awkward, and in her first real moment of sobriety since she showed up on Lena’s doorstep, she thinks, briefly, that maybe it’s time to chalk this, them, among the long list of mistakes she’s made along the way to get her to this point. She thinks about Justin and Tommy, and how she chose them and her new family over her and Lena’s decade long friendship, their past and history, and wonders if that was the turning point or if it was just a long time coming, that maybe somewhere along the way they just grew apart.

Deep down in her bones she knows the answer; she just doesn’t want to admit it.

“You know,” Lena approaches carefully behind the paper. “You’re mother called six times this morning. Think you should call her back?”

Reaching for a bagel, Rebecca merely shrugs. She tears a tiny piece of it off and pops it into her mouth. “It’s Karaoke night at Sullivans tonight. Wanna go? Do our famous rendition of Lady Marmalade?” She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. It feels too tight, fake. Rebecca chalks it up to the hangover.

Lena puts the paper down and stares at Rebecca for a long moment. It unnerves her. “Are we ever going to talk?”

Pushing herself up from the table, Rebecca busied herself with fixing herself a cup of coffee. Stirred in the milk, added sugar. Sipped it slowly. When she turns back around Lena was still starring. Waiting. She opens her mouth to tell her, to spill everything because maybe it will make her feel better, make this dull pain she feels deep in her chest will loosen it’s hold, but she just can’t. Talking meant admitting what she did, what she lost, and she just isn’t ready to file Justin and the rest of the Walkers away with the rest of her mistakes. It made it too final.

“So, that’s a no for Sullivans?”

The blonde sighs heavily and shakes her head. “It’s Sunday.”

“So?”

“I have to work tomorrow. I have to spend today catching up on the work I skipped out on for the past two days so I could play hooky with you.” Rebecca watches and Lena stands and tosses the paper into the center of the table. “When you’re ready to talk, I’m here. But until then,” there’s another pause, another look, “I can’t.”

Rebecca slides back into her seat at the table after she leaves, draws her legs up to her chest, rests her chin on top of her knees. She sighs, heavily, and wonders when Lena became the responsible one, the adult.

She feels tired.

[four]

Because Rebecca’s Rebecca and dealing with her problems has never been her strong suit, she goes to Sullivan’s alone. Orders herself a beer, a cocktail, a shot of tequila (a personal favorite) all in quick succession. She’s angry with Lena for reasons she can’t explain - for not coming, for not pushing her harder to get her to talk. And it’s ridiculous, and childish, and it all boils down to the fact that she’s here, at a bar, on a Sunday evening, half way to being pissed drunk and if that doesn’t tell her that she has some serious problems, she doesn’t know what does.

But self indulgence has always been a problem of hers, and even though she’s vaguely aware that this isn’t the most healthy way to deal with her problems, it’s worked pretty well thus far.

“Now this a crime,” a voice says behind her, and she throws back a shot, chases it with a beer, and feels fingers lightly on her back, on the skin between her t-shirt and jeans. She’s just drunk enough to think of Justin, and the way his hand used to rest there sometimes, on the small of her back, and how right she always thought it felt. She’s not drunk enough, however, for it to not make her want another drink.

She orders another shot and turns to the voice next to her. “What is?” She smiles, flirty, almost predatory.

“A pretty little thing like you sitting alone at a bar,” the guy grins, pearly white teeth and all, and leans in, dangerously close and she can smell his aftershave, the hint of expensive cologne. It makes her dizzy.

“Oh, yeah?” She asks and turns around on the barstool, leaning back on her elbows.

And this is how it starts, how it always starts.

He orders her a drink and she lets him and they flirt and drink together, and two beers later their hands stumble across one another’s in the pretzel basket, a beer after that her elbow bumps against his, and before she can second guess herself, she’s leaning in, dangerously close, and he kisses her. It’s simple. It’s easy. It’s her. This is what she does. She doesn’t know him, doesn’t want to know him, and this is the point, when she pulls away and smiles that smile, when Lena will come up behind her, giggly and slightly drunk, and pull her away.

Only Lena’s not there. And he leans in again, his lips brushing against hers aggressively, desperately, and for a second she doesn’t move, doesn’t respond, thinks twice, but then his hands are on her face, and hers are around his neck, and he whispers, “do you want to get out of here?” and makes it sound so appealing, so compelling that before she can think they’re throwing cash down on the counter and her hand is in his as they make their way out of the bar.

*

The couch is scratchy, uncomfortable, and his weight above her almost crushing. Her hands push at his shirt, up, and his slide under, cup the silky fabric of her bra. He kisses her hard, crushingly on the mouth and it hurts almost, the way their teeth slam together. She pulls away, it’s too much, like she can’t breathe, and his lips skim over her neck, her collar bone. Her eyes stare at the ceiling, at her surroundings, and his hips push into hers, frantic, creating friction that’s almost uncomfortable. His hands feel like ice as they trail over flesh. He grabs too hard, pushes too much.

“No,” she says, barely above a whisper and tries to push him away, but he persists. She closes her eyes and tries but can only see Justin and they way he’d looked at her that afternoon when she told him the truth. The hurt and anger. The disappointment. The air in the room suddenly seems too stale, suffocating. She hears, feels the button of her jeans coming undone, his hands trailing lightly under the cotton of her underwear. “No,” she repeats, firmer, louder, shoving him away harder.

She can’t do this.

“What the hell?” He pulls away just enough for her to slip off the couch. She pulls her shirt down, grabs her jacket.

“Look. I’m sorry, I just can’t…. I can’t.”

[interlude]

Rebecca almost died once.

It happened after the teacher killed himself. After she deliberately told his wife about the affair, because some twisted, sick part of her wanted to. It was her version of rock bottom, and she’d hit it, hard. She’d went on a drinking binge, a coke binge. Didn’t get out of bed for days, didn’t eat, didn’t sleep. Stopped going to class. She didn’t cry, not once, just laid there in bed, thinking back over kisses and touches, mistakes. What the hell she had been thinking.

Lena showed up a week in. The coke had been a twice, three times a day habit; she chased painkillers with a bottle of scotch that sat on her nightstand, just within reach so she didn’t have to leave her bed. Lena threw her into a cold shower, threw out what was left of the drugs, the alcohol. Helped her detox, held her hair back while she threw up for hours, held her while she shivered and sweated and begged for her to make it stop. It was awful, the worst thing she had ever been though and she doesn’t kid herself now, years later, by denying what could have happened. She knows another day, hell, another hour left by herself, she would have turned into another statistic, another tragedy; so young the papers would have said, so much potential.

“What the hell happened?” Lena had asked carefully.

She shook her head, felt the Chicago breeze filter in through the open window. She crossed her arms over her chest for warmth, breathed in and could feel her ribs, count them with her fingers.

“I don’t know,” she replied, maybe because it was the truth, maybe because it was easier than the truth.

Years later, she still can’t explain it.

They never talked about it again.

[five]

Her legs are boneless and she trips over her own feet on the way to the elevator; she pushes the button once, twice, three times. It won’t move fast enough. She feels nauseous, light-headed, dirty and decides to take the stairs instead. She grips the railing as she takes them two at a time, her pace frantic, desperate almost and as soon as the cool LA hits her skin she gasps, like she’s been holding her breath, like she hasn’t breathed in days, and she’s angry with herself. Embarrassed.

There’s a pain in her chest, right above her heart. It’s been there all weekend, for a while now if she really thinks about it, ever since she got that phone call, and it grabs hold, tightens. She walks a few paces, stops, can’t breathe again. And it hits her, then, on a random street corner in LA, when she’s alone and only half sober. Justin’s you’re just like your mother cuts through her over and over, on constant reply and it hurts more and more each time because maybe it’s the truth, maybe that’s what she’s been trying to outrun this last weekend, her whole life.

Maybe the different person she thought she had become because of these last two years, because of the Walkers wasn’t all that different from the person she used to be - the girl who destroyed lives and marriages without a second thought because it suited her and her needs, her wants. A girl who fucked strange men whose names she didn’t know, didn’t care to know, because she could, because it was easy.

She lied to Justin. To everyone. Sent a man her mother loved packing because she was angry with her, because she wanted her to hurt like she did, every day.

It’s refreshing, somewhat, in the midst of all this, that at least she’s not that girl anymore.

[six]

Monday morning comes too early, the sun shining through the curtains, her phone ringing on the table next to her. She’s already awake. Lena’s rustling around in the kitchen and Rebecca pulls herself up, makes her way towards the kitchen, sliding into a chair. She pulls her legs up to her chest habitually, rests her chin on top of her knees.

Lena raised an eyebrow in her direction. “What time did you get in?”

Rebecca clears her throat, it’s hoarse. Tired. “Around four, I think.” She’d walked all the way back to Lena’s, stumbled in while it was still dark, but barely, maybe two, three hours ago. Showered, scrubbed her skin raw, sobered up.

“And you’re up at this hour? I’m impressed.”

There’s a beat, a long pause, and Lena slides the paper towards herself, sips her coffee. Rebecca chews on her bottom lip, swears she can still taste the liquor on the back of her tongue and thinks about brushing her teeth again.

“I’m not a Walker,” she says out of nowhere, calm and even, and it tastes bitter the way it falls so easily off her tongue.

There’s a minute, maybe two where Lena just stares. “What?”

“William Walker isn’t my father. My Mom lied. I’m not a Walker.”

“Wha - what… when, when did you find this out?”

“About a week ago.”

“Do they know?”

She remembers Justin, that day in the foyer, and that feeling she has felt for days, that pain in her chest, tightens. “I’m sure they do by now, yeah.”

“God,” Lena pauses, contemplates, eyes wide. “I’m sorry.”

Letting out a long whoosh of air, Rebecca fingers the hem of her pajamas and rests her cheek against her knee. “I am, too.”

[interlude]

The truth of the matter is that she liked being a Walker. She liked the stability, the comfort, the normalcy.

She loves her mother in a way only a daughter can, but that part of her that isn’t at all exactly nice, thinks that it’s more because she has to, and less because she actually does. So when she gets thrown into the world of the Walkers, once she moves past the initial craziness, discomfort, and strained relationships between her and her new half-siblings, and moves towards actually being a part of something, it’s kind of nice. Better than nice.

It is, as cliché as it sounds, a breath of fresh air in her relatively drab life.

It’s everything she never thought she wanted and when Nora hugs her, tight and comforting, and Rebecca smells her perfume and that simple mom smell - something reminiscent of baked goods and soap, home - the sound of things finally fitting together can be heard in the distance. She’s got friends and an almost family. She has Justin, who is more of a kindred spirit and a friend and confidant than anyone she’s ever met and Nora who is just there, always, without complaint, despite everything Rebecca is and everything she represents.

So when faced with the idea of losing it all, she lied. And yes, she realizes it was wrong, and even more so, she realizes why she did it.

Something things, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t grow out of and maybe this, the freefall she’s found herself permanently stuck in, is karma’s way of kicking her ass for not cherishing what she had to begin with (Lena, her mother, her life).

Maybe she’s finally getting what she deserves.

[seven]

Her cell phone vibrates and rings on the table between them, and Rebecca reaches forward to silence it. It’s Nora, again, and her gut tells her she needs to answer it, to come clean, but she’s just not ready.

“So is that,” Lena says, motioning towards the phone, “what this weekend was about?”

“What do you mean?”

“This. You showing up on my doorstep. The reappearance of Bex Harper, drunken slutbag extraordinaire?”

Rebecca leans back in her chair, stung. Eyes Lena appraisingly and is surprised when the blonde does not falter. “Ouch.”

“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I don’t know what you‘re talking about.”

“You do. You know. This isn’t you. The old you, yes, but don’t fool yourself, Rebecca, the person you used to be, our friendship, disappeared the day you moved in that house. And it’s okay,” she continues in a rush, cutting off Rebecca’s protest, “it is. It’s good for you. I’m glad that you’re better. That you’ve finally found your place.”

It’s funny, Rebecca thinks, that even after it all, after all that’s happened between the two of them, all the times she’s cursed Lena and they day they met, that she’s the one still holding on, not her. She looks around Lena’s apartment, clean and tidy and doesn’t see the accustomed piles of unpaid bills, doesn’t see the trashcans overflowing with beer cans and liquor handles and wonders when she got herself so together. After Tommy? Justin? After Rebecca completely cut her out of her life?

“Maybe you’re not a Walker,” Lena starts again after a long silence, “but being a Walker did change you. And it was for the better. Don’t throw that away. I can’t watch you ruin yourself all over again.”

She thinks of last night, with that couch and that guy, and how she’d had the strength to say no in a situation where she’d never been able to before. Maybe it’s growing up, or progress, or hell, just moving forward, but maybe Lena’s right. Maybe that, right there, that single saving grace was a testament to the person that was beginning to shine through the cracks.

Maybe people really can change, if they want to badly enough.

“You never could,” Rebecca replies quietly after another long pause and remembers Chicago all those years ago, Lena holding her while she cried, promising it would be okay.

“What?”

“You always… you were always good to me even when I gave you no reason to be.”

Lena shrugs, and because they knew each other pretty well at one time, Rebecca recognizes the underlying sentiment: who the hell else was going to do it? And really, it summed up their entire relationship as a whole.

[eight]

It’s Tuesday by the time she checks her messages. She goes through them one by one, starting off by deleting every one that begins with the sound of mother’s voice, but loses her will half-way through and listens to a few seconds of them by the end (it’s slow, but progress all the same) and she sighs every time Nora’s voice comes on the line.

“Rebecca, come on now. This is ridiculous. I don’t care what your last name is. None of us do. It does not matter. We all are going to love you no matter what. We’re like… we’re like that family, you know, from that movie. Once you’re in, you’re in, there’s no getting rid of us. What movie was that from? Oh, geeze, now that’s going to bother me all day. Hey, Justin! What’s… Oh, forget it. I love you. Call me back…. Oh, and that is not a suggestion young -“

Her inbox cuts off the message and Rebecca sets the phone down in front of her and settles back into the couch. Her heart hurts in a way she’s all too familiar with, and her throat is thick with an emotion she doesn’t quite recognize. She should call, Rebecca knows, but it’s early still - not even eight, and she really hasn’t figured out just what exactly she’s going to say yet.

Looking up, she catches Lena looking at her and they share a small smile.